HUGH HEWITT: As Minnesota’s fraud scheme explodes, Trump gains a golden opening for accountability

George Washington Plunkitt was born into poverty in 1842, but rose to become a state representative and state senator in the famous “Tammany Hall,” New York’s Democratic Party machine. He also became quite rich along the way.

Plunkitt always defended his machine, his methods, and the money they made for him. Plunkitt happily defends Tammany’s practices and rebuts accusations of corruption with the standard response: “Nobody thinks of distinguishing between honest corruption and dishonest corruption. There’s a world of difference between the two.”

Plunkitt’s arrogance survives in today’s machines of the left in the country’s deep-blue jurisdictions. Voters across the country are still in shock as the story unfolds from 2022, focusing on how the Somali community in the Twin Cities (most citizens, most not) defrauded Minnesota taxpayers. The lights in the Gopher State should be much brighter now, and from now on, I have a follow-up that will make the Twin Cities swamp look like a puddle.

The Minnesota story has been hiding in plain sight, with excellent reporters at Powerline, one of the original blogs from more than 20 years ago, examining the scandal for years.

TIM WALZ RESPONDED TO TRUMP’S ‘INCOMPETENCE’ CLAIM, DONATED RESPONSIBILITY FOR FRAUD IN MINNESOTA

Powerline founders John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson, and more recently their colleague Bill Glahn, have continued to dig and report, dig and report, dig and report on the “Somali connection.”

In recent weeks, the story has caught fire with the help of Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute City Journal and reporting from Fox News. “Minnesota is drowning in fraud,” as Thorpe and Rufo put it, has now become a national story. Pray this is the first of many.

Boss Plunkitt used to say, “There is honest bribery and I am an example of how it works.” “I can sum it all up this way: I saw my opportunities and took them.”

WALZ WILL BE ACCUSED OF ‘IMPROPRIATE LEADERSHIP’ IN THE 1 BILLION DOLLAR FRAUD SCANDAL WITH “UNFORGETTABLE REMINDERS OF WATERGATE”: GOP CHALLENGER

It turns out that defendants, suspects and convicts in the Gopher State also see their own opportunity and put Tammany to shame when it comes to scale and speed.

Minnesota’s crooks have rid the state of large sums of cash through various schemes; The most famous of these is currently “Feeding Our Future”. It took truly extraordinary efforts by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and state attorney general Keith Ellison to look away to allow this scam, and soon others, to flourish. The possessed girl in “The Exorcist” had nothing against Walz and Ellison when it came to turning heads.

We want to thank former Attorney General Eric Holder and former White House Counsel Dana Remus for bringing to the nation’s attention the massive fraud ring run primarily by Somali Americans and Somali communities in the Twin Cities.

DEM APPOINTED EDUCATION OFFICIALS FACE NEW SCREENING AS FEEDING OUR FUTURE SCANDAL, TRUMP TARGETS FRAUD

From where? Because this couple made Walz much more than an obscure governor of a deep blue state. The pair were primarily responsible for “vetting” 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, as one of her potential running mates. The dynamic duo of Holder and Remus either completely missed the massive cons on Walz’s watch or decided they weren’t significant enough to derail his candidacy.

During the “Brat Summer” the legacy media abandoned their past practices and joined the effort to push the worst pair of candidates to the finish since Alf Landon and Frank Knox were defeated by FDR in the 1936 referendum on Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Holder gave Walz his blessing, and so did Holder’s fans in the Manhattan-Beltway corridor. Media elites also blessed Holder’s decision.

LIZ PEEK: MAJOR WELFARE ROBBERIES IN MINNESOTA PROVE DEMOCRATS CAN’T PROTECT THEIR OWN DARKNESS

Big mistake.

Now Walz is part of the national Democratic Party brand and refuses to leave; He is choosing to focus his efforts on running for a third term as governor next year, seemingly hoping he can be the party’s standard-bearer in 2028. Instead, “Feeding Our Future” catapulted from the Minnesota news ghetto onto the national stage.

In addition to the “Run Gavin Run” slogan, the GOP should also have a “Run Tim Run” slogan because, like Walz, California Governor Gavin Newsom has some explaining to do on an industrial level.

MINNESOTA GOVERNMENT WORKERS ACCUSE WALZ OF ‘MAJOR FRAUD’ OVER ALLEGATIONS AGAINST SOMALI COMMUNITY

No, I’m not talking about the California governor’s French Laundry debacle. And no, it’s not the devastating fires that ripped through Los Angeles in January. It’s not even the former chief of staff who is accused. No, the exact parallel to Walz’s pain is the Newsom administration’s handling of COVID-era benefits for the unemployed — a practice driven by statewide political grifters.

The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program (PUA), like the Lost Wages Assistance plan, was designed and funded by Congress to keep alive Americans who were unemployed or whose businesses were closed due to COVID quarantines. Like standard unemployment programs, these COVID-era programs were primarily administered through state unemployment insurance offices and other government agencies.

COVID quarantines were unprecedented, and the public health “officials” responsible for recommending and administering them should never be taken seriously again.

MINNESOTA’S $70 MILLION FRAUD REVEALS HOW DEMOCRATS BUILT A SYSTEM DESIGNED TO REVERSE

Intoxicated with new authority, many of these bureaucrats came forward when elected officials sought guidance on what to do about the mysterious and deadly disease imported from China. (Their rejection of the lab leak theory points to their genuine expertise, as opposed to what is assumed.)

When lockdowns became the daily solution, Congress rightly realized they were shutting down the livelihoods of tens of millions of Americans and poured life-saving money into the country three times over.

It wasn’t just the Minnesota Somali community that “seen and seized their opportunity.” California’s cons were the same: the real, honest-to-goodness cons of the California penal system; prisoners who had enough time to scheme and commit fraud.

MINNESOTA STATE GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES TOLD KAMALA HARRIS THAT THEY WROTE A ‘WARNING’ ABOUT WALZ AS THE DNC’S VP CHOICE

Ask your favorite AI engine this question: “How much fraud has been committed against the California Employment Development Department during COVID?” Answers may vary, but the ceiling on the cost of fraud is $20 billion. The ceiling is more than $30 billion.

The Golden State’s EDD is “led” by a director, and Governor Newsom, who took office in 2018, appointed two people: Rita Saenz and Nancy Farias. COVID arrived on Newsom’s watch, and he and his appointees must take responsibility for the fraud that followed. They make the Walz-Ellison team look like spearheads when it comes to turning a blind eye to fraud.

President Trump championed Operation Warp Speed ​​during his first term, and Congress rightly decided to (1) spend federal dollars to ease the pain of sequestration and (2) leave the payment of most public benefits to government agencies; While the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department were innovating in various ways to prevent economic collapse, COVID business loans were managed by private sector banks.

GOP GOVERNORAL CHALLENGE ROBBINS SAYS WALZ IS ‘A ABSOLUTE FAILURE’ IN FIGHTING FRAUD

The years following the Wuhan laboratory accident demonstrated the gross incompetence of the American administrative state, but also the necessity for the federal government to pick up the tab when “scientists” lose their collective minds and recommend, for example, the closure of schools.

The official timeline states that COVID emerged in Wuhan in December 2019 and reached US shores a month later. We may never know when the first cases were identified by the Chinese Communist Party, and we are in no position to investigate the egregious fraud and resulting disaster for which General Secretary Xi Jinping is responsible.

But President Trump could order a six-month deep dive into financial fraud going on not just in Minnesota and California, but across the U.S. — though these are “patient zeros” to never let a crisis pass without enriching the state’s worst actors.

COMER TARGETS WALZ IN NEW HOUSE INVESTIGATION, CITING MINNESOTA FRAUD CLAIMS AT NEARLY $1 BILLION

Could President Trump create a term-limited panel to investigate government agency fraud during COVID? Yes. Could this panel burn a few GOP reputations along the way? Inevitably.

But the attention to the Minnesota Somali shakeup should be a signal of demand for nationwide accountability.

CLICK FOR OTHER OPINIONS OF FOX NEWS

President Trump often acts in the mold of Teddy Roosevelt, who was never afraid of headlines like 45-47 — as long as he provoked them.

Now is the time for the president to ask a handful of the smartest, most respected people in the country to abolish the responsibilities and “initiatives” of many state governments of the COVID era and report quickly and in clear English on the extent of fraud against government agencies.

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD FOX NEWS APPLICATION

Make your search and promotion team smart and fast. Appointing Johnson and Hinderaker as co-chairs of a strike team dedicated to compiling the facts we know today would ensure accuracy and good writing.

And give them a deadline: August 31, 2026. Voters deserve to know how their state governments are working, or not working, during COVID before they vote again.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM HUGH HEWITT